Re: Now it's RDF vs Microformats

On 22/02/07, Benjamin Nowack <bnowack@appmosphere.com> wrote:
>
> On 22.02.2007 11:20:13, Paul Walsh, Segala wrote:
> >Thought some of you might like to comment on this [1]. I'm going to write a
> >post addressing the same topic but to counter Sam's misunderstanding and his
> >failure to understand that Microformats is (part of) the Semantic Web -
> great!

Commented, thanks.

In the meantime Julian Bond had dropped in a comment about RDF being
"write-only". Makes more sense if you know he was active around FOAF a
while ago (did he add support to Ecademy? I forget). Although there
are now quite a few RDF browser kind of tools, it still isn't obvious
that anyone's reading & making good use of FOAF etc from places like
Ecademy & LiveJournal.

> >addressing approximately 1% (+- 1% ;)) of the Semantic Web potential and
> >using an extremely good hacked method that's not based on standards.

> Try to avoid talking about "potential" uses, it's a "shake head and
> laughter" trigger in MF circles. And I'd also suggest not to talk
> about the standards thing. MFs are based on semantic HTML principles
> and from a microformateer's POV no standard justifies any effort needed
> above that. The deployment so far may support that argument. I know I'm
> repeating myself, but I'd focus on the non-syntax features of RDF,
> things like storage, querying, and merging, which are not covered by
> microformats technology.

+1# to that.

It could be argued that the microformats process actually produces
more robust standards than traditional standards orgs, as they start
with existing specs (iCalendar, vCard etc), their target
representation is pretty mature (HTML) and they have a tight community
loop to filter bad ideas.

Whatever, bottom line is the microformats folks have been very
successful at getting more data on the web, a key goal of the Semantic
Web community. That's a win for everyone.

But once there, what does one do with the data? We do need to
demonstrate something more compelling than what tools like Operator
can already do. As Benjamin suggests, integration & query are good
bits.

Cheers,
Danny.


-- 

http://dannyayers.com

Received on Thursday, 22 February 2007 13:35:39 UTC